North’s chorus of despair: Veneer looks as if it may finally crack

When a fiction-based resolution of a crisis starts to unravel it is not always easy to pinpoint the moment progress reverts to tribal retrenchment.

For the sake of neatness let us assume that the current escalation of tension in the non-politics of Northern Ireland began when Martin McGuinness resigned as Stormont’s deputy first minister in January of last year.